Zee Jay Digital today announced the launch of its Unified Marketing Transformation™ framework, a tool that helps chief marketing officers define the operating structure they need to succeed in today’s complex digital world.
“The CMO’s reach across the organization and impact on the customer experience is driving the need to transform the way marketing gets done,” said Eric Rotkow, managing director of Zee Jay. “This newly updated framework emphasizes operating model visualization to show how the marketing organization should think about change, enabling leadership to successfully embark on the transformation journey.”
While digital transformation context has been set by the intelligentsia, i.e. McKinsey and BCG, the structure marketing needs to manage in a state of perpetual change has been under-defined until now. Zee Jay’s strategic-yet-actionable framework accommodates the evolution of customer behavior, technology and capabilities to allow marketing to thrive.
The marketing operating model is at the center of the approach, and considers the particulars of the business model and the customer experience to define how marketing needs to function by answering key questions:
- What is marketing’s responsibility for the firm?
- How does marketing interact with adjacent functions?
- What capabilities are needed now? In the future?
- Which capabilities are in-sourced, and which are outsourced?
- How does the global footprint accommodate speed, scale and relevancy?
- Which areas govern standards? Which areas are free to operate independently?
Once the marketing operating model is defined, agile and waterfall approaches are appropriately put in place to support the operating model, teams are structured based on types of work, and technology is leveraged to enable teams to engage customers.
Rotkow noted that marketing transformation initiatives are often triggered by the need to replace a single system, but cautions that technology decisions shouldn’t be drivers. “Marketing leaders are tempted to tackle technology first,” he said. “Technology in-and-of-itself does not solve problems, but is rather the enabler of the marketing operating model as a whole.”
Kelly Troia, former head of marketing operations at Whole Foods and Walmart, and Zee Jay client concurs: “Understanding how to build and manage a marketing technology stack is important,” she said. “But the technology component must be undertaken in the context of organizational structures, management approaches, talent and agile processes in order to succeed.”
The introduction of the Unified Marketing Transformation framework was made in response to growing recognition that the classic org design view is not sophisticated and dimensional enough to describe how modern marketing organizations operate—as evidenced by the fact that 70% of marketing transformation initiatives fail (McKinsey). For more information on why traditional approaches to change don’t work, download this just released eBook: The Importance of an Agile, Talent-centered Operating Model: A CMOs Guide to Transformation.